


The One Where Caine Meets Jupiter's Family

by childishinquiry



Series: contents as described [1]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Cousin Vladie Is Gay Because I Said So, F/M, Jewish Character, the one where he meets the family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 17:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3332108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childishinquiry/pseuds/childishinquiry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Caine meets Jupiter's family. This is that one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Caine Meets Jupiter's Family

“Do you want to come to my house for dinner next Saturday?” Jupiter asked, casually, trying not to let her face or her posture put any sort of pressure behind the words. “My family wants to meet you.” 

 

Caine choked, of course he did, and he cleared his throat for a lot longer than seemed really necessary. Eventually, he said, “Why?”

 

“Well, from their perspective, we’ve been dating for a few months, which is longer than I’ve dated anyone else,” Jupiter admitted, smirking at Caine as he smiled to himself. He denied it, but he was totally smug about it, eternally satisfied that she was over the goddamned stars for him, that she’d stayed and kept on staying. “I tell them I’m out with you whenever I’m out with you, as well as whenever I’m off-planet--I mean, I am with you then, but they think I’m with you with you. From their perspective I’ve already half moved into your place. Plus I told them you got me that ‘nanny job’ that’s been letting me actually spend my money on them, they’re very impressed by that.”

 

“I am impressed that none of them suspect otherwise.” Caine fiddled with his water bottle, itched at his back. They’d just flown, and his wings were still aching to fly. “I’m not certain that--”

 

“Caine. I don’t want to push you, but it’s going to happen eventually. You should probably come to dinner before they realize you’re avoiding meeting them. They’ll get real ugly if that happens.” 

 

It had happened, the last time Vladie’d managed to keep a boyfriend. The boyfriend had been from a nuclear suburb family, and hadn’t been “ready for the commitment” of Vladie’s family. It hadn’t ended well.

 

Caine nodded, looked at her. Thought about it. “Okay. Should I wear the glimmer?”

 

“Well--hmm.” Caine wore a “glimmer”--which was space slang for “thing that makes me look human so people don’t ask awkward questions”--when he walked around Chicago on their "normal people" dates. But the way things were going, the way they had been going since Caine and Jupiter met, he’d either be wearing the glimmer a lot, or… “No. I’ll think of something.”
    
    
       
    
    --*-- 

 

By think of something, Jupiter really meant that she cleared her throat at about ten minutes to 6 on Saturday night, and said, “Mom?”

 

“Go set the table, Jupiter.”

 

“I already did. Mom, I need to talk to you.”

 

Her mom turned, irritably, as if she couldn’t make the stew with her goddamn eyes closed. “Yes, Jupiter? Is it Vladie? I told that boy to wear his nicest tracksuit.”

 

“No, Mom. It’s about Caine. He’s…”

 

“He is coming.” Every word dripped with possible threats.

 

“Yes! Yes, of course! But, look, he looks a little different than most people. You have to make sure the others don’t get weird about it.”

 

“What, does he have a neck tattoo? Or a face tattoo? Боже мой, are you telling me that my daughter is dating a man with a tattoo on his face?”

 

“Who has a tattoo on his face?” Jupiter’s aunt drifted in, and her mom made room for her to get at the potatoes in the oven.

 

“Jupiter’s boyfriend.”

 

Her aunt grimaced. “Really, Jupiter? I thought you said he was a Cancer!”

 

“He doesn’t have a tattoo on his face! He just has weird ears, and, teeth, and stuff.” And also the neck thing and sometimes his eyes flashed in the dark and-- “He was born with it, he can’t help it. You have to make sure uncle and Vladie don’t make fun of him.”

 

“Oh, honey, they will not make fun of him!” Jupiter’s aunt cried. She bit her lip. “He is not too abnormal, right? You will have nice, normal babies?”

 

The doorbell rang, so Jupiter shrieked her way out of that conversation and straight to the door. It was not a terrible tragedy that she managed to clip Vladie in the eye with it before she squeezed out onto the step.

 

Caine wasn’t the sort of person to be disturbed by Vladie cursing up a storm just beyond the door. He was, however, exactly the sort of person to stare at the doormat as if it might bite him.

 

“Caine, it’ll be alright. You look nice.” He really did; he was wearing one of the Earth outfits Jupiter had bought for him, which was good, since he really didn’t get Earth fashion. (Which was fair, since she didn’t understand space fashion, and Caine picked out her space outfits. She had a lot of likes on Space Instagram.)

 

“If you say so, then I believe you.” Caine took Jupiter’s hand, running his thumb over where she’d nearly had a ring, a nervous tic of his. He was scared.

 

Jupiter went on tiptoe to kiss his forehead. “Don’t worry, honey. They’re mostly harmless.”

 

“Bring him in!” cried Jupiter’s mother, looking at them both from the window. “He doesn’t look so bad, Jupiter, I don’t know what you were worried about.”

 

Jupiter sighed and shuffled Caine inside. The reaction was indecisive. The men looked at him and were obviously immediately set against him. The women, and Vladie, stared at Caine with big eyes. Eventually, Vladie solemnly held his hand out to Jupiter for a high five. Vladie’s father guffawed, and the women disappeared to discuss the cost/benefit analysis of Jupiter’s new boyfriend having a nice ass versus the thunderous eyes that seemed to communicate that he had many small knives on his person.

 

Jupiter, for her part, pointedly slipped the knockout blaster he’d put in his back pocket into her own. Jupiter’s uncle-type-person-that-mostly-existed-to-drink-her-actual-uncle’s-beer shook his finger at Jupiter’s wandering hand.

 

“No hanky panky,” he admonished, in a voice that could be heard in Michigan. “This is a Christian home, young lady.”

 

Caine muttered, “What’s hanky panky?”

 

“Leave room for Jesus!” Jupiter’s mom called out from the kitchen, cackling.

 

“Who’s Jesus?” Caine muttered. He looked at Vladie. “Is that Jesus?”

 

Jupiter shook her head. “Don’t listen to them. We’re Jewish, they’re just being mean. That’s Vladie. Definitely not Jesus.”

 

“What’s Jewish?”

 

“Me, and my family. Don’t worry about it, you don’t have to worry about it.” Not until Hanukkah anyway, but. That was three whole months away! “Just follow my lead, Caine.”

 

Caine nodded, like he did when she ordered him about as Queen, when they were up in the stars, trying to change them. He squeezed her hand.

 

“Jupiter! Bring your young man to the table, it’s dinnertime.”

 

The family flowed into the kitchen and around the table, the mad clatter of arrangement even louder as they rearranged themselves to allow Caine to squeeze between Jupiter and her mother. Her uncle’s wife seemed to threaten a near-coup over her elbow space, but a little more room was found, and they managed to dish out hot, generous portions without actual bloodshed. Jupiter’s uncle said the prayer, and they all turned their attention to the food.

 

“Why do you wear eyeliner?” Matthie asked, because he was a little shit that liked to destroy the happiness of all other human beings.

 

Caine paused in his somber inspection of the potatoes. (Jupiter had told them that they were tasty, but apparently, eating roots was a bit gross, by space standards.) “Because I do.”

 

Matthie was obviously not satisfied with this. “Yours is thicker than Jupiter’s even, and Mom says she’s отчаянная.”

 

Jupiter glared at him. “замолкни.”

 

Matthie stuck out his tongue at her.

 

“Why d’you wear eyeliner?” Jupiter’s uncle was feigning disinterest, but he wasn’t a good actor; he leaned back in his chair, narrowed his eyes, and shoveled his mouth full of food, looking like a pig splice with indigestion. “You like girls, right?”

 

“Yes.” Caine actually liked girls and boys, but he didn’t elaborate upon that, wisely. Jupiter’s family had learned to be good with Vladie, but it had been a difficult process, and Jupiter didn’t want to waste any of her lifeforce explaining bisexuality, especially since she knew exactly how much her life cost. “Where I am from, the...eyeliner is normal.”

 

“You didn’t tell us he was from the west coast, Jupiter,” Jupiter’s uncle said. Being “from the west coast,” to Jupiter’s uncle, meant that a person was from Los Angeles, which meant a person fell under a definition that only Jupiter’s uncle had ever found in the dictionary. Liberace was “from the west coast”; so was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 

“He’s not, he’s--” Jupiter paused. Where would a half-wolf man be from? “He’s from Alaska.”

 

(Jupiter watched _Balto_ , like, a lot, as a child.)

 

“So men wear eyeliner, in Alaska?” Jupiter’s uncle’s wife was suspicious, but she was suspiciously only nine thousand percent of the time.

 

“Yes,” Caine said, slowly, looking at Jupiter. She nodded. “We--we don’t think women should be the only ones that work at looking nice.”

 

Jupiter’s aunt was beaming; Jupiter’s uncle scowled. “I did not think Alaskans would see it that way. That Sarah Palin woman, she seems pretty conservative.”

 

“She also says she can see Russia from her house,” Jupiter reminded him, which set off a chorus of groans, bemoaning the state of the American educational system. “She’s not a good example of Alaskans, is she, honey?”

 

“...Yes?” Caine relaxed when Jupiter nodded at him. “Yes, she is...very….not...Alaskan.”

 

“I think he looks good in eyeliner,” Jupiter’s aunt said, cocking her head. “It is unusual for a Cancer, but from what you said, Jupiter, Draco was high during his birth. Draco men are all unusual.”

 

Second helpings of stew made their way around the table. Jupiter’s mother warmed when Caine thanked her, very genuinely. Then, as he turned to pass the stew to Jupiter, her mother saw Caine’s neck.

 

“Jupiter!” she hissed, making the entire table turn and listen in. “You said he didn’t have a neck tattoo.”

 

“It’s not a tattoo.” Caine put his fingers to it. “It’s a brand. It’s the mark of my parents.”

 

There was silence. Caine ate the stew, completely unaware that he’d made everyone uncomfortable.

 

“Well, shit,” Jupiter’s uncle said eventually. “You found one who is as much of a tragedy as you, Jupiter.”

 

“Yeah,” Jupiter muttered, patting Caine on his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah I did.”

 

Dinner very consciously steered itself away from Caine, and Jupiter’s family merrily occupied themselves with arguing about who had the worst houses to clean. They discussed this roughly twice a week, but the conversation carried itself well past dessert, with Jupiter’s mother taking up half of it with an increasingly violent thesis about how the Dunlevys were secretly working for Satan.

 

When the dust settled into the post-dinner scene, Caine was playing Xbox with Vladie and Matthie. Caine was insultingly bad at it, which of course made Vladie and Matthie more insistent that he keep playing. Vladie was alternating between shooting Caine in the face in the video game, hitting on Caine, and threatening Caine with “like, all the bad stuff” if he ever hurt Jupiter. Caine was paying strict attention to him, nodding seriously at Vladie’s terrible threats.

 

Jupiter’s mother sighed, putting her feet in her daughter’s lap. “Well, at least he is not the type to get himself shot over a telescope.”

 

Jupiter thought about that. Not over a telescope, no. “Do you like him, mama?”

 

“Feh, no. I will never like anyone who looks at my daughter like that.” She sniffed. “But he is not as bad as the others you’ve tried to pass off as good men. I will tolerate him.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Was that true? The part about his parents?”

 

“Of course it was, Ma. Why would he lie about that?”

 

Jupiter’s mother pursed her lips, jotted down a few things in last Tuesday’s crossword. “Jupiter, rub my feet like you mean it, they are not live snakes. Bring this boy over again sometime. He eats like he’s never seen food before.”

 

“Okay, mom.” Jupiter held her breath. It was a Hanukkah miracle, which meant things would go horrifically wrong later. But for now...for now, it was good.

 

Caine turned to look at Jupiter, and smiled, shyly, all _L_ _ook at me! I’m functioning in this weird thing you Earth humans call society!_ Jupiter smiled back.

 

Yeah. Right now was looking pretty good.

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes: Vladie is gay because I said so, Caine is bi/pan because that makes sense (who would gene-code servants to only be able to "please" one gender?), and at some point in the movie, Jupiter's mom threatens to shove latkes up her uncle's ass, which I figured to mean that the family is Jewish. Maybe Russian people eat latkes as a whole, but why not make them Jewish? The small child in the movie is dubbed Matthie in this fic because, again, why not?
> 
> "Боже мой" means "Oh my God," "отчаянная" means "desperate," and "замолкни" translates to "Be silent." All Russian generated with the help of Google Translate.
> 
> EDIT: Russian corrected for accuracy thanks to a helpful comment from helgie! I also made some minor formatting corrections, so if you're coming back to this fic and you're like "I don't...this is different, why??", that's why.


End file.
